Back in his room, Thalion took a look at the blood, which now humd with power in his blood sense, but he would wait a bit before consuming it. First, he wanted to try so things out. He began by creating blood mist from the blood the sanguine thorn provided. It was actually easier than he thought, and after a few tries, he could switch the blood between liquid and mist form.
Next in his training was controlling blood rivers and moving them through the room with incredible speed, gradually increasing the river in size. Then, he tried to alter parts of the river to form sharp spears, intending to use the entire river as a giant weapon to destroy his enemies. But he couldn’t make it happen. Every ti he tried, he partly lost control of the river, and liters of blood fell to the ground. He could change it a bit, but not enough to pierce armor plating or reliably use it as a weapon.
Thalion summoned his blood armor a few tis to make sure he didn’t forget it and practiced so maneuvers with his mana blade, strengthening his strikes by controlling the blood armor. The control wasn’t as good as he had hoped, but it was good enough for now. With that done, he finished his blood training and moved on to his regular skills.
He wanted to improve his fireball skill—more precisely, his flathrower. Not only did he want to intensify the flas, but he also wanted to try moving the flas around him, like he did with the blood river. To increase the heat of the flas, he poured more mana into the skill. The challenge was that the skill had a limit to how much mana it could take, and Thalion was slowly working on increasing that limit. The wall he and Sylas had used for training was now completely black from the onslaught of flas, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was making the skill stronger.
From ti to ti, he stopped to regenerate mana and then worked a bit on his swordsmanship to recover. After hours of constant training, he switched to sothing he hadn’t trained in a long ti—his mana barrier. He altered the form of the barrier, making it thicker and more stable, so that spells would have a harder ti penetrating it. His blood training had helped him a lot in this regard. Sadly, ti passed quickly, and before he could start training the mana wave, which he also wanted to do, it was already morning.
That ant it was ti for body tempering. He transford into the umbral predator and began devouring the plants Zyra had prepared. These plants held even more energy than the last ones, aning it would take much longer than last ti. He even had to take a pause and fully focus on his body tempering after devouring a fourth of the first hill of plants. It took him over ten hours to finish them all, but the effect on his body was imnse. He could feel power rushing through his veins, the sheer strength in his muscles. He would have loved to have a rematch with the red orc right now.
He could tell he was nearing the end of stage two of his body tempering thod for the umbral predator. The difference in how much energy he could absorb as an umbral predator compared to earlier stages was insane, and it definitely had to do with the rarity of the race. He didn’t have any more ti—he needed to get to the training hall. Thalion thought this while transforming back into his human form. The body tempering had taken far longer than expected. He felt the desire from the sanguine thorn to devour the vials filled with blood when he left his room, but he ignored it. He wanted the blood to absorb as much mana as possible. There were easily around 500 liters of blood stored in those vials, and it would take ti until they were fully loaded with mana. He hoped it would be enough to push the sanguine thorn even further.
He was extrely lucky that no one else needed that blood, so he didn’t have to share it and had it all for himself—not even vampires should have such a luxury. When he arrived at the training hall, he imdiately noticed sothing different: four guards were standing outside.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?” Thalion asked the guards.
“We were waiting for you,” the woman said. "There are over twenty shapeshifters waiting for you inside."
“What? I thought the training hall was for guards only,” Thalion said perplexed.
“Yes, but they were quite aggressive, and we didn’t want to throw them out since they belong to Garrick’s force,” the woman replied.
“Not like they would train anyway,” another guard interjected. “They’re just watching and waiting.”
“Well, let’s get this show on the road,” Thalion said with determination as he stepped inside, ready to throw them out himself.
“There you are! We thought you’d never show up,” a muscular man shouted at him the mont he entered the training hall. Everyone imdiately stopped what they were doing to watch the conflict unfold.
“I guess you’re the shapeshifters from Garrick,” Thalion sighed. At least would be done with those people after today and could do more important stuff.
“Yes, and we think it’s an embarrassnt that so many people look up to you, and—"
“I hadn’t finished,” Thalion interrupted the man in an ice-cold tone. “You’ve not only annoyed most people in this base, but you’ve also threatened an alchemist, and now you’re standing in a training hall reserved for guards. You people are no longer welco here. You’ll be moved to the outer districts where Michael and his followers live, so we can keep an eye on you.”
“You want to do what?” the man scread in anger. “You’re useless! Your only form is that of a bird. What are you going to do against us? I think it’s ti we set the record straight.”
The shapeshifters all stood up, their eyes radiating hatred. Damn, he’d really hit a nerve, Thalion thought. It was ti for so slaughter—this behavior should be enough to justify killing them outright.
“You just threatened another mber of Kael’s base. If you don’t leave now and accept your new situation, I will bathe this hall in your blood,” Thalion said with determination, motioning to the guards in the hall to stand back. The hall was almost empty compared to last ti, with only about ten guards training, and Thalion didn’t want any of them killed.
The shapeshifters looked surprised by the threat, but before the man could say anything, the woman next to him spoke up with an arrogant sneer on her face, “You and what army? Do you think those low-leveled guards can help you at all? Why shouldn’t we just kill you all right now? We ca to show you your place, but it seems we were too benevolent after all. Why shouldn’t they believe us when we say you went crazy and attacked us? After all, we’ve fought hard to help you against the orcs and—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence because Thalion had made his move, firing a blood thorn through her head, silencing her for good. There was no real reason for talking any longer so why not start in exp farming.
After that, the hall erupted into chaos. So of the guards fired spells at the shapeshifters, who all transford into different beasts. Thalion yelled at the guards to get out of the hall and to block the entrance, which they did reluctantly, seemingly not believing he could kill them all on his own. Most shapeshifters transford into variants of black bears, while others beca black lions. Each form differed slightly—so had longer claws, others were bigger, and so even had bone spikes protruding from their backs. There were a few outliers: two transford into hornets, and one into a large snake. The most powerful were definitely so of the bigger bears and two lions, who radiated strength.
Their levels were higher than his—none of them were below level 40—but Thalion was confident he could kill them. None of these beasts were a match for the umbral predator, which he would use if his human form couldn’t handle them. There was already another group of shapeshifters: those who hadn’t transford at all because they were dead. Four shapeshifters lay lifeless on the ground, blood thorns lodged in their heads or hearts.
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Thalion fired blood thorn after blood thorn, triggering his movent skill with full power, dashing back and to the side to avoid the charging beasts. Then he leaped into the air and unleashed a dense stream of flas at the shapeshifters. The large bear in front charged through the flas and tried to bite him, its eyes glowing with hatred. Thalion reacted quickly, firing a blood thorn into its open mouth, causing the bear to fall to the ground, screaming in pain.
On the side, Thalion saw the last of the guards leaving the training hall and closing the door. Good—now he could use his other forms without any concern. Thalion triggered his movent skill to keep distance between himself and the shapeshifters, who were now splitting up so he couldn’t avoid them for long. He summoned his mana blade while firing blood thorns at the shapeshifters, who tried to dodge but often weren’t fast enough and got badly injured whenever a thorn hit them. Normally, their recovery would heal them quickly, but the blood thorns happily prevented any healing.
Thalion summoned his blood armor and unleashed a mana slash at the feet of the faster-moving lions. So managed to jump over it, while others lost their legs and fell to the ground, screaming.
Thalion dashed to the side to avoid one of the lions' claws, but he wasn’t fast enough, and he felt how the claws scratched along his left arm, leaving deep cuts. Thankfully, the armor had prevented most of the damage; otherwise, his situation would be much worse. In turn, he cut the lion in half with a charged mana slash and dashed to the side to at least keep his distance from the bears. The two hornets were moving in surprisingly fast, but they both died just as quickly as one mana slash separated their heads from their bodies.
Sadly, the swing gave another lion an opening to strike at him, ripping his belly open with a swipe of its claws, which made him scream in pain. Thalion quickly summoned blood armor around the wound to stop his organs from falling out. The damned strike had been powered by so skill, as the talons had glowed in orange light; otherwise, his armor should have blocked it since he had infused it with extra mana. Thalion returned the favor by letting a vine of the sanguine thorn pierce the side of the lion and, with a swing, rip the whole beast in half, while the sanguine thorn greedily drank all the blood it could get.
It was getting more and more difficult to keep the distance. Even flying up wouldn’t help him much since most of the cats could easily jump to the ceiling. When he kept the fight near the ground, they at least blocked each other from attacking, but ti was up. One of the smaller and faster bears reached him and slamd him with its shoulder, throwing Thalion against the wall.
“This is just getting too dangerous,” Thalion thought and transford into the umbral predator. The bear, who had charged him to hopefully finish him off, only had ti for a quick surprised look before Thalion ripped its whole face off with claws of shadows. Thalion grabbed the bear, which must have weighed tons, and threw it at the attacking lions.
Next, he activated the umbral predator's instincts, and shadow gathered around him while he now could feel where every living shapeshifter was. He charged at the last four bears. The bears had a shoulder height of over three ters, but Thalion didn’t fear them in the least as he ripped the bears into pieces. A lion wanted to attack his back as he tore out one of the front legs of one of the bigger bears, while the shapeshifter roared in pain, but Thalion felt the lion’s approach. He turned around, and with a swipe of his claw, ripped through the head of the lion like it was butter.
The last two bears activated so boosting skill, which sent them into a frenzied state, but he didn’t care. He was much faster than the bears, and even when he got hit by the claws, so what? His wounds healed in seconds. Shortly after, he finished off the last two bears. The six lions and the snake who were still alive stood back, watching him in fear.
“What are you?” one lion asked in fear, its voice female.
“Please, rcy! We give up,” the snake tried when Thalion didn’t answer.
“There is no rcy,” Thalion said in the deep voice of the umbral predator, like it ca from darkness itself, while blurring forward. He grabbed the lion by the head before it could dodge and ripped it off. A second swipe with his claws ripped another lion almost in half. They all fled in panic, running toward the door, except for the snake, which wasn’t really good at moving fast.
“Please don’t,” the snake begged, but Thalion ended her life with a swipe of his claws, ripping her head into pieces.
The surviving lions arrived at the door, which was over three ters high and made out of steel, smashing against it with full force, roaring in desperation. The guard had locked the entrance to the training hall and was most likely pushing with all their might against the door from the outside to make it harder for the lions to break it open. The struggle didn’t last long. Thalion appeared behind the lions, and his long claws made of darkness ripped through them. Two tried to fight back, but after a short exchange of blows, they lay dead on the ground, completely disfigured.
Thalion looked around. Blood and corpses, completely ripped apart, lay everywhere. One of the bears, whom he had fired a blood thorn at, was still twitching on the ground, and Thalion flashed over and ended the life of the bear. He contemplated if he should devour the corpses, but he decided against it. Let’s make an example of these people, he thought, and maybe the alchemists could even use the corpses for crafting. He looked down at his form; there was no blood on his skin. The dark mist that was rising from it had turned all the blood that had spread on him into darkness and absorbed it. The power of a mystic creature was truly astonishing.
Thalion transford back into his human form and knocked on the door. “It’s over. You can open it now.”
A second later, the door swung open, and he walked out. There were over forty guards waiting outside, all looking at him with surprise and shock.
“Please send an alchemist to gather the materials,” Thalion asked Rowan, who had joined the guards holding the door, before he transford into his eagle form and shot into the air, heading back to his room to do so more blood training.
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